When i first requested The Yellow Room for review, I had rather vague expectations. I hadn’t heard or seen any of my friends mention it but it’s published under Hot Key Books, so I figured the intrigue must be justified. And indeed, it was! The keywords tagged to this book were “lies, truth, sanity and yellow”. What I didn’t know was coming was the sheer madness of the story!

Seven Ways We Lie was very ambitious. With seven main characters a lot could go wrong: unresolved plot lines, not enough depth, loss of focus and characters that might be too similar. I’m glad to say that Seven Ways We Lie didn’t suffer from any of these shortcomings. In fact, the choice to integrate so many characters’ perspectives worked!

Winter’s release was postponed by many months, leading to lots of sadness all around. As consolation, we received Fairest (#3.5) earlier this year to ease the waiting. Now the question is, was it worth waiting so long for Winter? I say, definitely! For one, it takes a lot of time to write 824 pages. It also takes a very long time to edit these pages to perfection.

Good humour that doesn’t try to be funny but absolutely is is hard to come by. In that department though, Trouble is a Friend of Mine delivered well. Intertwined with mystery, it made for a very entertaining read.

Set in Nazi England, 2012–2014, The Big Lie is premised on one question: What if the Nazis had won World War II? With this in mind, The Big Lie is a speculative work of alternative history. While nobody can say for sure how things would’ve turned out, I think the world that Julie Mayhew imagined is a rather plausible outcome. She evidently did her research and wove together the fascist ideals and lifestyles of the 1940s with contemporary ones.